from the perspective of a software developer and manager

What’s this blog about?

What’s this blog about?

After 6-8 years reading other blogs and generally being an internet lurker, I’ve decided I have something to say and am taking the plunge into writing my own blog.

You can read more about me when I get the page up, but to give you a brief idea of where I’m coming from, here’s a small blurb. I’ve been in IT for all of my career, spanning about 15 years at this point. I started out in phone support and have worked my way through the IT hierarchy. I’ve done helpdesk, operations, systems administration, some limited networking, and end to end web development. One other tidbit about me is that I am an INTJ. I never had much faith in personality tests until I read about myself there, but it seems to fit me to a T.

Judging by the fact that I was able to get this domain name so easily, and based on my limited development experience at 4 or 5 different companies, I believe the software development process is something that has been ignored for far too long in too many companies/industries. The reason that the software development process isn’t scrutinized in many companies the way other processes might be scrutinized is the difficulty in understanding what software developers do.

Unfortunately, a bad development process causes many undesirable outcomes:

Wasted hours. I’ve seen quite a few companies unwilling to budget for a particular piece in the development process, only to spend well over that amount in developer hours wasted. For some reason, it seems that many managers treat their salaried developers as a fixed expense, rather than something they’re paying hourly for. If you can save hours, you can save money.

Wasted time. This is not the same as above. All projects take a certain amount of time to complete. This is obviously variable based upon your development setup and the skill of your developers. However, if there’s a deadline to hit, wasted time can never be returned.

The above 2 will lead to lower ROI. Every manager in your company understands that term, and nobody likes a low ROI. It’s important to prove that your software project will somehow help the company save money or time and be worth the investment.

Obviously, a good development process will cause the opposite of the above outcomes and endear you to your company management and possibly get you promoted (unless there are other political factors at play. For the sake of this article, let’s assume a perfect world, where good decisions are rewarded and unicorns run through the forest).

I hope to write regularly in this blog about the software development workflow, software that can improve your efficiency, hr and recruiting issues, project management, keeping your customers happy, and anything else the comes into my brain. This will be from the perspective of a web developer, so I hope to get comments from my desktop, embedded software, and mobile development friends about how things may be different or the same for them. Also, I’m open to suggestions for article improvement and new articles.